The Company Of Snakes are the 3/5 of the Whitesnake line-up, that released the celebrated albums Northwinds (1978), Snakebite (1978), Trouble (1978), Live At Hammersmith (1978), Lovehunter (1979), Ready An' Willing (1980), Live In The Heart Of The City (1980), Come & Get It (1981) and Saints An' Sinners (1982). After Whitesnake, Bernie Marsden formed Alaska, Micky Moody founded the band Nightfly and Neil Murray besides being a member of Black Sabbath, also worked with Gary Moore, Brian May, Peter Green, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and many, many more. As for the rest of the Company, Don Airey has been a Rainbow, Gary Moore and Ozzy Osbourne keyboarder, John Lingwood has been a Manfred Mann's Earthband,Roger Chapman and Elkie Brooks skinsman and Stefan Berggren's previous band was Snakes In Paradise. OK, enough with the history lessons...
Before I move on to the album review there is one thing that must be shortened out: I'm a huge David Coverdale fan. So huge that even hearing his name makes me drooling and my eyes twirl. I think you can get the picture . As you understand, the outcome would be extremely ugly, if I tried to review an album that brings Him to mind, without Him being involved. (H is capital on purpose, cause this is the proper way to refer to Gods ). In order to avoid that and to maintain my sanity (my what?), I will try to fool myself a bit (Don't worry I'm really good at it!). Firstly, I will take the album cover out of my sight, because it strongly reminds me the Lovehunter album, that has a similar snake and almost the same naked chick... both in similar positions. Then, I must take the Snake out of the way... I mean... out of the band's moniker, so from now on I will not refer to them as The Company Of Snakes, but as tCoS. OK, now I'm ready to proceed with the review.
The Burst The Bubble album contains a perfect mixture of classic English Hard Rock and Rhythm Blues tunes. The production is amazing and was handled by Nikolo Kotzev (producer, songwriter and guitarist of Baltimore, Brazen Abbot and Nostradamus). As for the musicians, well, where else can you find a great combination of amazing slide guitar with heart melting solos? Only in the albums where Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden cooperate! And of course, in this album you can witness once more the legendary bass-lines of Mr. Neil Murray. The big surprise is the voice of Stefan Berggren that fits perfectly with the tCoS' music style and sounds as if he was brought in 2002 directly from the 70's!
The songs that stand out are the Ride Ride Ride (Run, Run, Run), an amazingly catchy song that makes you keep tapping your foot no matter how hard you try to stop, the Back To The Blues a straight-forward blues-rock song with astonishing guitar-lines and vocals, my favorite Can't Go Back which creates such a great atmosphere that imposes to be listened while you drink bourbon and you smoke heavy cigarettes, the Little Miss Happiness and Sacrificial Feelings that address strictly to Rhythm Blues lovers, the powerful ballad Hurricane and finally the What Love Can Do which has an AOR (yes, an AOR) sound!!!! Surprisingly the title song is probably one of the poorer ones along with the Days To Remember that even though it has nostalgic lyrics, such as Do you remember the Rainbow and Hammersmith Odeon?, it's not within my likes.
Before listening to Burst The Bubble I was wondering why such excellent and celebrated musicians point out their Whitesnake past in every move they make, there is certainly no need to do that. Their previous release Here They Go Again - Live could have easily been misunderstood as an attempt to exploit their Whitesnake history, but luckily Burst The Bubble makes it all clear, everything is done out of respect for their past and this adds one more reason for all of us to respect them back!